What should I do with these topics? (literature and psychology)

[lyh]

"What are some messages that the author may have intended to portray in the novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and how does he convey them?

 

 

I am in year 12 and I have trouble choosing a topic. Would the question above be a good topic to start?

 

A supervisor has told me that I should talk about the narrative voice instead.

 

So I have come up with this topic:

 

"How does Mark Haddon achieve the construction of an appropriate narrative voice in the novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time? "

 

Would this be better?

 

I have another topic which I am more interested in, but it would be riskier to do because I do not take this IB subject, and I have never studied anything about the subject. This is a psychology topic:

 

"What are certain factors that affect a person's sense of belonging in a particular home country or specific countries?"

Would you recommend the literature topic (which I would have to think a little deeper to decide on the specific research question), or the psychology one, which I am pretty sure the topic would work but I would need to do a LOT of extra research and studying?

 

Thank you.

 

 

IB subjects I take:

 

HL Biology

HL Math

HL Economics

HL Language B

SL English LangLit

SL Chemistry

 

For my iGCSEs (GCSEs, GCE O Levels) i scored:

A* in English First Language

A in English Literature

no history, no psychology

Edited October 18, 2014 by lyh

[Sofia.]

I haven't read the book, but the topic seems okay to me I'd probably change "how" to "to what extent" because then you can be a bit more critical, but that might be just me. 

 

Please don't go with the psychology topic! I'm sure that it's interesting, but writing an EE in a subject that you don't take is always risky, especially if that subject is psychology. Apart from being generally difficult, from what I've heard it's also quite different from non-IB psychology - and the format of the EE is really important. You can write a great essay, but if it's not written the way the IB wants it, it's not going to score highly. So, I'd strongly advice you against it. Go with something you know and score those bonus points

[nina101]

I read the book, I loved it, and I think that the second topic - about the narrative voice - is great